The term ‘paradise’ and its religious implications originate from ‘pairi-daeza’, Old Persian for ‘a wall surrounding a garden’. Pairi-daeza is the title of an elective course series addressing the appropriation of landscape as a common resource in European Metropolises while exploring new forms and types of public spaces. The elective course serves as an introduction to landscape architectural design on various scales including the topics of border, threshold, water, vegetation, topography, choreography, and metaphor. Architecture students develop a project based on the perception of place, knowledge of landscape-architectonic typologies, and conception of public space. They become familiar with GIS as an analytical tool, model building as a design methodology and the representation of landscape through plans. The design process is accompanied by workshops, lectures, excursions, critiques and a workbook.